Ex-Magician’s Son Secures $4.2M Seed Round For Cybersecurity Firm

Editor’s note: The following is the latest profile in a series of articles about startup founders from non-technical backgrounds who have launched successful venture-backed companies. Read the previous interviews in the series including with MagicSchool AI founder Adeel Khan here, Trunk Tools founder Sarah Buchner here, Tabs founder Ali Hussain here, Craft founder Ilya Levtov here, GC AI founder Cecilia Ziniti here, and Incredible Health co-founder Iman Abuzeid here.

Before William “Will” Cielen began developing cybersecurity software, he performed in magic shows produced by his father.

Born to a magician father and an acrobat mother, Cielen spent his first five years living aboard a cruise ship before residing in Las Vegas for another five years. By age 10, he relocated to Montreal to join an intensive ballet program, splitting his days between morning dance training and afternoon classes.

“I was rather introverted as a child, but I became extroverted through the unique upbringing,” Cielen remembers.

By age 15, he had bypassed two grade levels, enrolled in college, and established a website design and development enterprise. A subsequent journey to a hackathon located in Waterloo connected him with venture capital investors. During that same week, he decided to leave school, quit an algorithmic trading internship, and fly to San Francisco to launch Hilt.

Now, the startup is emerging from stealth and exclusively sharing with Crunchbase News that it has secured $4.2 million in seed financing to help organizations detect and halt unusual data activities, such as the theft of sensitive information.

Array Ventures spearheaded the investment round, with participation from Verdict Capital, Base10 Partners, Brickyard, Liquid 2 Ventures, Sequel, the Sarah Smith Fund, and Alumni Ventures. This new capital elevates Hilt’s cumulative funding to $4.7 million, following a $500,000 pre-seed round led by Pear VC in October 2025.

Finding the problem

Upon arriving in San Francisco, Cielen—co-founder and CEO of Hilt—knew he wanted to work in cybersecurity, though he was still defining the exact challenge to address. His background included attending Concordia University in Montreal and completing an algorithmic trading internship at the National Bank of Canada.

“I had to do a lot of customer discovery,” he stated regarding his efforts to grasp the market landscape and converse with potential users, “to see what the real problems were, not to build in the dark.”

A breakthrough discussion occurred in January when the chief technology officer of a major hedge fund outlined security vulnerabilities within its high-frequency trading infrastructure. Because those systems operate on microsecond speeds, Cielen noted, there is virtually no tolerance for security tools that introduce latency.

The hedge fund presented a prospective contract valued between $1 million and $2 million if Hilt successfully resolved the issue, according to Cielen. The client then paid a six-figure sum upfront prior to Hilt developing the actual solution.

Hilt’s software tracks how information travels across cloud networks, computers, and corporate infrastructure, establishing behavioral baselines for both users and system resources. It identifies anomalous behaviors—even when executed by authorized users—while operating without dragging down system performance.

For instance, a late-night sign-in might be typical for a staff member who regularly logs extra hours. However, if an individual who exclusively works daytime shifts suddenly accesses the system at midnight immediately after modifying their password, Hilt can flag that combination as suspicious.

The platform can notify an organization’s security personnel for review or, in specific instances, quarantine the behavior in real time.

“They don’t have to wake up and see that it happens, but we can actually stop it as it happens,” Cielen explained.

The enterprise achieved this by operating at the kernel level—the foundational core of an operating system—and streaming activity metrics into graph neural networks, a specialized form of artificial intelligence designed to spot irregularities. Cielen noted that this grants Hilt visibility beneath disparate customer software applications, enabling deployment across diverse technical environments.

He added that metrics gathered from a client indicated that implementing Hilt actually accelerated their cloud systems.

The company maintains its relationship with the initial hedge fund and has incorporated another high-frequency trading organization, stated Cielen. He reported that the customer base doubled during the month following their expanded marketing efforts, though specific total numbers were not disclosed.

Hiring and expanding beyond finance

Aside from trading institutions, Hilt is drawing interest from neobanks, healthcare organizations, professional services firms, and other entities handling confidential information. Clients deploy the software directly within their own environments to maintain data sovereignty, paying an annual subscription fee for each data collector.

The young company employs 11 people, featuring co-founder and CTO Alex Genest alongside founding engineer Zin Bitar. Although initially based in San Francisco, the team relocated to Chattanooga, Tennessee, alongside investor Brickyard to hone its product-market fit.

Cielen indicated that the fresh financing will be directed primarily toward recruitment and market expansion.

“The money is very useful for hiring the best people,” he remarked.

Investor POV

Shruti Gandhi, general partner at Array Ventures, observed that most existing products in this domain typically fall into two categories: they attempt to predict sensitive data beforehand “and get it wrong a lot, or they tell you what happened after the data is gone.”

“Hilt can find and stop these breaches in real time, with accuracy,” she wrote via email. “It also runs entirely inside the customer’s own environment, so nothing leaves the company. For a bank or government entity, that is the difference between proactive vs. reactive response.”

She further emphasized that contemporary security breaches do not always resemble conventional attacks.

“They look like normal activity such as an employee using valid access, a connected vendor, or an AI agent doing what it’s allowed to do,” she noted. “Hilt connects these actions and detects when normal behavior becomes suspicious. As AI agents increasingly interact and act autonomously, we think this problem will only grow, and we wanted to get ahead of it.”

Niko Bonatsos, founder and managing director of Verdict Capital, stated his investment decision was driven heavily by the founder himself.

“At Verdict Capital, we back founders who are obsessed, have high velocity and are learning animals,” he wrote via email. “Will exemplifies these traits.”

Bonatsos—a former investor at General Catalyst who launched Verdict in early 2026 and previously backed Mercor—also praised Hilt’s architectural approach, mentioning that Hilt represented one of the initial term sheets his firm issued.

“Most security tools look at content: files, signatures, known threats. Hilt looks at how data moves, at the kernel, which is the one place you can’t hide from,” Bonatsos said. “Everyone assumed you couldn’t sit that deep without slowing systems down. They did it in live financial environments… Selling security into banks is about as hard as enterprise sales gets, and I watched them do it.”

Related Crunchbase query:

• Global Cybersecurity Venture Funding In 2026

Frequently Asked Questions

How much funding did Hilt raise in its seed round?

Hilt raised $4.2 million in seed funding, bringing its total funding to $4.7 million when combined with a prior $500,000 pre-seed round.

Who led Hilt’s seed financing round?

The seed round was led by Array Ventures, with participation from several other investors including Verdict Capital, Base10 Partners, Brickyard, Liquid 2 Ventures, Sequel, the Sarah Smith Fund, and Alumni Ventures.

What makes Hilt’s cybersecurity software unique?

Hilt operates at the kernel level of an operating system to monitor how data moves, using graph neural networks to detect unusual activity in real time without introducing system latency or requiring data to leave the customer’s infrastructure.

Who are the co-founders of Hilt?

The startup was co-founded by William “Will” Cielen (CEO) and Alex Genest (CTO).

What industries are showing interest in Hilt’s technology?

Beyond high-frequency trading and finance firms, Hilt is seeing interest from neobanks, healthcare organizations, and professional services companies.

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Illustration: Dom Guzman